Ancestry has access to 1939 Register

I have to confess its partly a matter of if I see some numbers can they be decoded. But in this case, identifying the name of the registration district may well help in correlating with Civil Registration events which are of course recorded by Registration District and there is no direct correlation with the local authorities which the ED code maps to. This is particularly true for the Urban and Rural districts which are much smaller than the County Boroughs.

Using documents on the histpop.org.uk website, I have determined that the registration districts that were in existence on 1st January 1939 (so for example Ilford is a sub-district of Romford 191/2 not a district of its own; Manchester is split between Manchester North - 464 and Manchester South - 466, both Ilford and Manchester came into existence as full-blown districts later in 1939). I believe I have worked out most of the district numbers but it is guesswork and I have only seen limited official description of the numbering. I have asked the GRO and FindMyPast without success.

The sub district name is probably less useful but can highlight whereabouts in the district the address is, so for example the histpop website has clarified that 384/1 is the Handsworth sub-district of Birmingham.

Ironically I have all of the district and sub-district names/numbers for 1961, but these are not valid for 1939 as the whole numbering scheme was revisited once more in 1946.

 

I have e-mailed Brett directly and he has replied that he doesn't have the mapping from numbers to names. Particularly with regard to rural districts these can straddle more than 1 registration district.